Iran Arrests Suspected Converts to Christianity

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Ragtime
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29 May 2008, 1:36 pm

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Amid a growing crackdown on religious freedom, Iranian police reportedly have been rounding up people they suspect have converted to Christianity.

On May 11, police arrested eight people in the southern city of Shiraz, according to Carl Moeller, president of Open Doors USA, a Christian organization that fights religious persecution.

Converting from Islam is a crime in Iran; converts can face jail and other penalties.

Most of those detained have been released, but at least one of them, 21-year-old Mojtaba Hussein, is still behind bars and is not cooperating with his captors, according to Moeller.

“He may not be willing to give up the names of other Muslim converts. He may not be willing to recant his faith himself,” Moeller said.

Numerous calls to Iranian government representatives in the U.S. have not been returned.

Though they are protected under the Iranian constitution, Christians are not given the same freedoms as other citizens in Iran. Christians can’t worship freely or hold public office, and they can be arrested for even speaking to Muslims about Christianity.

“Such people are persecuted, and particularly in the 1990s such converts were killed — it’s thought by government agents,” said Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank.

Under the watchful eye of the Iranian government, many have been forced to worship in secret and are moving underground into what are called house churches —although some sects, such as Armenians and Syrians, have been allowed to worship in churches.

“With [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad as president, the Iranians are intensifying the religious dimension of their rule,” Marshall said. “The concern about the religious purity of the regime has become stronger in the last two or three years.”

Earlier this year, Ahmadinejad proposed a law that would impose a death sentence for any Muslim who converts to another religion. Under current laws, those charged with converting can be prosecuted and face jail time for vague crimes like “blasphemy” and “insulting Islam.”

Marshall said these restrictive policies may be creating a backlash among Muslims. “There are indications that with the deep unpopularity of the regime that people are turning away from Islam,” he said.

“Seeing Muslims converting to Christianity is directly threatening to an Islamic regime,” said Moeller.

He compared these small groups of converts to early Christians living under the yoke of the Roman Empire, who met in secret and whose beliefs were “dependent on dreams, visions, signs and wonders.”

Because Bibles are rare in Iran and teachings are not "as dependent on the Bible as Evangelical Christianity in America is,” said Moeller, there is a “real lack of scriptural foundation."

But despite the growing pressure from the state, worshippers continue to practice, and Moeller said the house church system seems to be growing.

“We’ve got confirmed reports of groups of Muslim convert believers doubling in size in the last six months,” he said.


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,359944,00.html

Hmmm, maybe that's why there is so much Islamic unity in Islamic nations --
because the people are forced to remain Muslim or else they'll be arrested and thrown in jail.
And that's simply for believing differently! To say nothing of displaying outward signs.
Free thought is obviously an extremely dangerous enemy to Islam,
since it is so punished.
I thus suspect that many Muslims in the Middle East are not Muslims by choice,
but would rather explore other more tolerant and loving faiths like Christianity.
But if they believe in Jesus, they have to keep it a complete and total secret,
or else they'll be arrested, thrown in jail, and "other penalties".


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skafather84
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29 May 2008, 1:49 pm

like as if anything from fox news is to be believed? they're a bastion of neo-con propaganda and yellow journalism.



Ragtime
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29 May 2008, 1:51 pm

skafather84 wrote:
like as if anything from fox news is to be believed? they're a bastion of neo-con propaganda and yellow journalism.


Are you saying that the concept that Ahmadinejad would order Christians arrested and jailed doesn't sound likely?
I tend to believe it, myself.



Last edited by Ragtime on 30 May 2008, 5:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

skafather84
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29 May 2008, 1:56 pm

Ragtime wrote:
skafather84 wrote:
like as if anything from fox news is to be believed? they're a bastion of neo-con propaganda and yellow journalism.


Are you saying that the concept of Ahmadinejad would order Christians arrested and jailed doesn't sound likely?
I tend to believe it, myself.



of course you'd believe something like that. you think everyone is trying to have christians arrested. your beliefs have proven elsewhere on this forum to be little more than delusions and little to no proof to back it up. i don't see much reason why you believing anything would be proof.



monty
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29 May 2008, 2:28 pm

I wouldn't be surprised if it were true. Iran is as bad as Saudi Arabia - lots of repression. The real difference, though, is that the Saudis are good religious oppressors, while Iran is bad when it religiously oppresses people. Conservative American heroes like George Bush go to Riyadh and hold hands with the princes.

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Kalister1
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29 May 2008, 5:13 pm

Christianity has a long history of forcefully converting people too. During the Dark Ages, many Pagans were put to death for their beliefs. Please don't act all high and mighty about Christianity, its all the same disease.



Cyanide
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29 May 2008, 5:17 pm

Kalister1 wrote:
Christianity has a long history of forcefully converting people too. During the Dark Ages, many Pagans were put to death for their beliefs. Please don't act all high and mighty about Christianity, its all the same disease.


QFT. Christianity is no more or less "loving and tolerant" than Islam.

Oh, and how about the Crusades, Ragtime? Can you explain that?



Kalister1
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29 May 2008, 5:18 pm

Cyanide wrote:
Kalister1 wrote:
Christianity has a long history of forcefully converting people too. During the Dark Ages, many Pagans were put to death for their beliefs. Please don't act all high and mighty about Christianity, its all the same disease.


QFT. Christianity is no more or less "loving and tolerant" than Islam.

Oh, and how about the Crusades, Ragtime? Can you explain that?


Dude, its obvious! Got to get that holy land back from the heathens, who aren't human because they don't believe zombie Jesus was the son of god, but merely a prophet :doh:



skafather84
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29 May 2008, 5:39 pm

Kalister1 wrote:
Cyanide wrote:
Kalister1 wrote:
Christianity has a long history of forcefully converting people too. During the Dark Ages, many Pagans were put to death for their beliefs. Please don't act all high and mighty about Christianity, its all the same disease.


QFT. Christianity is no more or less "loving and tolerant" than Islam.

Oh, and how about the Crusades, Ragtime? Can you explain that?


Dude, its obvious! Got to get that holy land back from the heathens, who aren't human because they don't believe zombie Jesus was the son of god, but merely a prophet :doh:



you mean israel?



codarac
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29 May 2008, 5:42 pm

So what do you reckon, Ragtime - should the US invade or not?



techstepgenr8tion
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29 May 2008, 5:53 pm

Ragtime, its nothing new or surprising. Just look at what happened in Beirut. If that doesn't say it in a nutshell I don't know what else would.



NobelCynic
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29 May 2008, 5:55 pm

codarac wrote:
So what do you reckon, Ragtime - should the US invade or not?

I think Ragtime would like to see simular laws in the U.S., persecting people who convert from Christianity.


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Quatermass
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29 May 2008, 6:07 pm

Ragtime wrote:
skafather84 wrote:
like as if anything from fox news is to be believed? they're a bastion of neo-con propaganda and yellow journalism.


Are you saying that the concept of Ahmadinejad would order Christians arrested and jailed doesn't sound likely?
I tend to believe it, myself.


And for once, I agree with you. At least Christian converts, in any case.

But Cyanide and Kalister1's assertions are also correct.


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Dox47
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29 May 2008, 6:08 pm

I propose a solution to the entire middle east: We hire the Chinese to obliterate and occupy the whole region, and split the oil with them. That way, we can bury our differences with the red menace, and lower gas prices at the same time, it's a win-win! Maybe we could cut the Israelis in as consultants, since they have the most experience killing Arabs, and it would keep their lobbyists in the states happy. Plus, the Chinese are immune to bad press and world outcry, so none of this pansy half-assed occupation we've been trying, a few million Red Chinamen aught to make that jihad less fun. Hey, stranger things have worked...



techstepgenr8tion
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29 May 2008, 6:08 pm

skafather84 wrote:
like as if anything from fox news is to be believed? they're a bastion of neo-con propaganda and yellow journalism.


Neo-con's are really just old time FDR and JFK democrats who, while the Democratic party moved out left, they stayed the same and became reabsorbed where they're at as Republican voters. When the left uses that term so freely and swings it like a stigma, it really makes me start seeing a parallel between the liberal use of 'neo-con' and the Islamic use of 'apostate'.



DeanFoley
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29 May 2008, 6:19 pm

Isn't Atheism illegal in Iran?